


To Love (To Fall)

by ChronicTonsillitis



Series: Prompt Fills [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angel! Bellamy, Angst, F/M, Princess Clarke Griffin, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:07:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27902722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronicTonsillitis/pseuds/ChronicTonsillitis
Summary: Her gaze drops to the ichor coating his chest, spilling like molten metal from his wound. “What—” The girl’s eyes widen, and her hand falters. “What are you?”Bellamy gives her a savage smile, the teeth in his mouth just a little too sharp to be human. His wings splay out, extending to their full length; and his feathers catch the light, shining deep onyx and gold. Her mouth falls open, elbow dropping as she slowly releases the tension on the bowstring. “Angel.”He laughs again, the sound sharp and cruel. “That’s right, princess.”****Princess Clarke accidentally shoots down an angel sent to watch over a relic in her possession. This act sets off a cascade of events that can only lead to one of two things: a death, or a fall.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Series: Prompt Fills [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141463
Comments: 19
Kudos: 60
Collections: The t100 Writers for BLM Initiative





	To Love (To Fall)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sparklyfairymira (myonetruelove)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myonetruelove/gifts).



> Written for the t100 Writers for BLM Initiative for the very talented Miranda (@sparklyfairymira) who prompted this beautiful moodboard:

Guardian angel is a misnomer. He’s not sent to protect her, just to watch.

That’s all well and good, but how is the princess to know? A girl born in war, trained to fight before she could walk, who could blame her for shooting him down?

Bellamy could.

And so he does, lying on the ground like a common bird, ichor flowing from the wound in his shoulder. One of his wings is crushed, limp and useless beneath him.

Even now, with his glamour dropped, the girl does not lower the bow. The arrow she’d nocked the second the one buried in his chest had left her fingers remains at the ready, the bowstring drawn tightly to her ear.

Bellamy groans, pressing a hand to his wound, palm gripping the shaft of the arrow where it’s lodged just below his collarbone.

“Did he send you?” The words are chilly, accusing, as though she’s the one who’s been harmed.

He has been watching her for days now, sent by the archangel who leads his garrison, although this is the first time he has dared venture so close. He knows little about the princess, only her name and her family, though he could if he wanted. It’s not her who is important anyways, it is what is in her possession. The sword.

“Who?”

She takes a step closer, her eyes narrowing. “Cage.”

He plucks the knowledge of whom she is speaking from the wellspring easily, despite his wound.

“The king of Mount Weather?” Bellamy pushes himself to his feet, barking out a harsh laugh. It’s harder than it should be, and he flinches as he stands. “Do I look like I take commands from a human king?”

His fingers find the arrowhead protruding from his back. He snaps it off cleanly and pulls the rest of the shaft out by the fletching, throwing the broken arrow to the ground at the girl’s feet. 

Her gaze drops to the ichor coating his chest, spilling like molten metal from his wound. It’s iridescent and bright, so different from the dark crimson of blood. “What—” The girl’s eyes widen, and her hand falters. “What are you?”

Bellamy gives her a savage smile, the teeth in his mouth just a little too sharp to be human. He rolls his shoulders back, stepping forward out of the shadows of the trees. His injured wing stays limp at his back, but the other splays out, extending to its full length. His feathers catch the light, shining deep onyx and gold.

Her mouth falls open, elbow dropping as she slowly releases the tension on the bowstring. “Angel.” 

He laughs again, the sound sharp and cruel. “That’s right, princess.”

His show of power is tempered as he attempts to take another step towards her and staggers, his vision blacking at the edges. His hand comes up to clutch at the weeping wound in his shoulder, a cry wrenching from his lips.

She’s at his side in a moment, slipping under his arm, taking his weight across her shoulders. One of her arms bands across his back, the other pressing against his bare abdomen. The princess is… surprisingly strong, for a girl of her stature.

Still, he struggles against the— the _indignity_ of her help. He can feel her heart fluttering in her chest, so fragile, so _human_. She’s worried for him, and it’s absurd.

“Please, let me help you,” she says quickly. “I didn’t mean—” _I didn’t mean to shoot an angel_ is surely what she means, but she doesn’t finish the sentence.

He wants to laugh at her fear, at her pity. _Even now,_ he wants to say, _even now I could kill you without thinking. Even now I am stronger than you can fathom._

And it may be true, but he also cannot stand on his own power. His grace may remain at the ready for now, singing at his fingertips with the ability to smite his foes, vanquish his enemies; but it seeps out with each slow drip of ichor that falls from his wound. His body is failing him.

Thus there is not much he can do but allow the girl to help, too weakened by his injury to hold himself up on his own.

She leads him out of the gardens, down some stairs and into the castle. The whole place is deserted and dusty, far from the bustling palace he’d imagined.

“Where is everyone?”

The princess glances at him curiously, slung over her shoulder. “Most of the household has accompanied my parents to the front. There are some servants yet, but I allow them leave beyond their duties.” She takes in his dour expression. “You will not be seen, if that is your worry.”

Bellamy grunts in response.

She takes him to what appears to be her bed chamber, helping him lower himself to the edge of the mattress. “Will it—” The princess wrings her hands, looking away from him. “Can you heal it?”

He shakes his head. “No. It will heal on its own, eventually, as all wounds do.” The skin on his chest gapes apart, ichor still flowing freely. “Would be faster if I wasn’t losing so much grace.”

“Grace?” She tilts her head, raising one eyebrow. “Not blood?”

“Ichor,” he corrects. Angels do not bleed. “But some grace seeps out with it.”

Perhaps he should not be telling her this, but Bellamy sees no harm. After all, he is forbidden from calling the others for help. Without her, he will be stuck grounded for weeks.

“I could close the wound,” she offers. “Sew it shut.”

“How barbaric,” Bellamy drawls. “But I suppose it will have to do.”

The girl gives him a hard look, as if irritated by his tone. “Very well.”

He shrugs internally at the thought of her annoyance. She _shot_ him, this wretched human girl. Forgive him if he is not polite.

He watches her as she digs through a basket of sewing tools.

The girl is rather pretty, he realizes for the first time, at least for a human. Up close her hair is more golden than the yellow he’d expected, pulled back tightly in a braid. There’s a smear of ichor on her forehead where she wiped at it with the back of her hand, and it shines even against the paleness of her skin.

“I thought angels could heal with grace,” the princess muses, threading a silver needle with a length of thread. 

“Others, yes. But we cannot heal ourselves, not in your world at least.” Bellamy leans back on his elbows, wincing as it pulls the skin taut across his chest. “An oversight on the part of my Father, in my opinion.”

“And how exactly do you get to your world? Heaven, is it? Do you fly up through the clouds?” 

Bellamy resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Not in the way you’re thinking. Heaven isn’t above you, that’s just a legend. It’s not in this same plane. We sort of just— sift through.” He shrugs. “I don’t know how else to describe it. A human couldn’t comprehend it anyway.” 

The princess narrows her eyes. “You’re awfully impolite for the embodiment of divine love.”

He scoffs at her peeved expression. “Legend.”

“Cherubs?”

“The way you’re thinking? Definitely a legend.”

She gives him a sort of assessing look, something so uniquely human it makes him uncomfortable. He cannot quite read her expression, cannot discern what she means to find. Angels do not— _display_ emotion in the way humans do. It is unfamiliar to him.

“You’re supposed to be preternaturally beautiful as well.” She takes a step towards him, one eyebrow raised. “But I suppose that’s just another legend.”

He gives her a wide grin, teeth glinting like ivory shards in the low light of the castle. “Is it?”

The princess meets his gaze head-on, unflinching. She steps forward, placing her hands on the bare skin of his chest, needle hesitating above his wound.

“This will hurt,” she warns, and Bellamy snorts. 

“After an arrow, princess, I’m sure your needle is nothing.” He smirks at her, but she doesn’t react, simply nodding. Her fingers press the raw edges of his skin together, and he suppresses a hiss as she pierces the wound with the curved needle, tying the thread neatly into a small knot. 

“You need not call me princess,” she says, her tone still strained with whispers of guilt. 

Bellamy ignores the suggestion outright.

“Do you often shoot arrows at strangers, princess?”

She bristles, her mouth tightening. “I thought you were a spy, or an assassin. You can hardly blame me for protecting myself.”

“Oh?” Bellamy raises one eyebrow. “Do you get many of those, then?”

The girl is quiet as she works, her expression unreadable to his untrained eyes. “A few,” she says finally, her eyes not moving from his wound. “Enough. I have been alone for a long time, and company these days is rarely friendly.”

She sounds resigned, not angry or frustrated. He’s seen the proof of her words, in the days before, as he watched her. The way she would turn as if to speak to someone and stop short; the way she flinched at any noise. She’s both unused to being alone and unused to the presence of others.

Bellamy feels— something, at her tone. He cannot quite place the emotion, something too foreign for him to easily recognize. Not guilt, or sadness, but— pity, maybe. 

He remembers loneliness. That feeling, at least, he knows all too well.

Her movements are precise, hand steady as she stitches the skin on his chest together. “I’m sorry,” she offers, perhaps a bit begrudgingly. “Had I known you were— well, had I known, I would not have done it.”

She ties off the thread and snips it, wiping her ichor-coated hands on a piece of clean linen. Bellamy snatches her arm out of the air as she attempts to reach for his injured wing, any warmth he was beginning to feel for the girl fleeing in an instant.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he says darkly. His tone offers no room for misinterpretation.

His wings are—personal. They are not to be touched by others, especially not by human girls. They will begin to mend themselves when the wound on his chest knits back together, and no sooner.

The princess tugs at his grip, frowning at him. “The break must be set, or it will heal improperly. I know how to do it. Our hunting birds often—”

Bellamy’s eyes narrow, his fingers closing even tighter around her wrist, pressing the bones together until she flinches. “I am not a bird.”

“No,” she says quietly, her gaze serious. “I don’t suppose you are.”

Bellamy drops her wrist.

Perhaps—perhaps he has misjudged her.

Freed from his grasp, the princess turns away, moving towards a table by the side of the room. She takes a fresh cloth and folds it into a square, wetting it in the bowl of water before her. Her feet carry her back to Bellamy, still seated on the edge of her bed. The girl falls to her knees in front of him.

He stops her as she makes to clean the ichor from his skin.

This time his hands are gentle, moving to pluck the cloth from her grasp. She watches him warily as he looks at her, his free hand moving to cup her chin. He can feel her stiffen as their skin touches, feel her hesitance as she allows him to tilt her head up.

Gently, he wipes the smear of ichor from her forehead.

“I appreciate your help, princess,” he says, voice smooth. “Even if you are the reason I needed it.”

“Clarke,” she says softly, eyes fixed on his. “My name is Clarke.”

“Princess Clarke, heir to the house Griffin, heir to the Lightbourne throne. Yes,” Bellamy agrees. “I know your name.”

Her eyebrows furrow. “How? How do you know who I am?”

He lifts one brow, frowning. His hand cups her cheek. “Do you not wish to know my name as well, princess?”

She looks slightly chastened. “Would you tell me if I asked?”

“Perhaps not.” His lips quirk up is a half smile. “You may call me Bellamy.”

He’s not sure why he tells her. He’s not even sure why he wants her to know. Still, the small part of her pink lips is worth it.

“Bellamy,” she repeats, rolling the word around on her tongue.

He stares at her for too long, enraptured, before shaking it off.

It’s not—he wouldn’t— she’s just a _human_. He’s not interested in her, he insists to himself, except clinically. She is a means to an end, a novelty.

Still, Clarke looks at him with those deep blue eyes and he has to look away. 

As he does, his eyes catch on something displayed across the room, the bright gleam of the metal reflected back onto the surface on which it sits. In a brighter room perhaps someone would not be able to tell, but in this low light it is unmistakeable: the light comes from within the blade.

A reminder of his purpose. A reminder of the savage cruelty of mortals.

The girl may dress the wounds she’s caused but she’s no better than the rest of them, not in the end.

“I’m sorry I shot you, Bellamy,” the princess says softly. “Had I known you were— watching me, I—”

He laughs meanly, cutting her off. Inside his chest, anger roils. She makes it sound like— like he had a choice. Like he wanted to be there, wanted _her_.

She looks at him, taken aback.

“Oh, princess,” he spits, throwing the title back at her. “Do you really think you’re so beautiful as to turn my head?”

Clarke blushes red, stiffening. She pulls away, gaze downcast. “I wasn’t trying to imply—”

“Pretty enough, sure,” Bellamy continues, lips curling into a cruel smirk. “For a _mortal_.” He hurls the word like it’s the ugliest thing he can think of. Like he wasn’t just allowing himself to be drawn in by her strange allure. 

It wouldn’t do to have her getting any thoughts about where they stand. He is an angel, a creature of divine grace; she is most certainly not. 

His eyes catch on Gabriel’s blade once more, strengthening his resolve. The girl is nothing. Nothing but a daughter of clay.

“So why have you come to lurk about my home?” Clarke’s eyes are hard, her lips pressed tightly together. “If not to watch me, then what?”

His cheeks burn hot with shame and anger, because she’s not wrong, not truly. He was sent to watch her, but it wasn’t— she is not the important thing. What use does he have for a human?

“You have something that belongs to us. Something you have no right to possess.”

The princess turns to him, brows pulled together. “What?” She follows his gaze to the sword, glowing with it’s unearthly light. “No, it can’t be.”

“Can’t it? You’re a Lightbourne, by blood if not by name. You must know its past.”

“They say it was given to Queen Josephine I by the archangel Gabriel— but that’s only a myth, only a legend.”

Bellamy’s face tightens. “It wasn’t his to give.”

She looks startled, her eyes wide in disbelief. Clarke shakes her head as if to clear it.

“So what, then? You’re here to take it back?”

“No.” Bellamy grits his teeth, looking away. “The sword was a gift given to Gabriel by our Father, and he used it to cut his wings away. The blade absorbed some of his grace, binding the blade to your bloodline.”

He cannot take it back, no angel can, and that is the entire point. The bit of Gabriel’s grace that gives the sword its power repels him. None but a human may touch the sword, and none but a Lightbourne may wield it. While the line remains alive, the sword remains bound, out of their grasp.

The princess and her mother are the last of the line.

Clarke looks stricken. “Why? Why would he do that?”

“For love.” Bellamy’s lip curls in a sneer. “The queen asked, and he obliged.”

“That’s horrible,” she says, aghast at the thought.

He snorts. “That’s humanity.”

Bellamy met Gabriel once, when he was younger. When he was first brought into the barracks, kicking and screaming. They meant to separate him and Octavia: one to Diana’s garrison, one to Gabriel’s. 

“I won’t leave her,” Bellamy remembers yelling. “She’s my sister! You can’t make me leave her.”

Diana tried to calm him, unused to the strong display of emotion. “We are all your brothers and sisters.”

“You are not,” he insisted, glaring at the two seraphim. “Not like her.”

In the end, Gabriel interceded on his behalf. “Such passion is a strength,” he told Diana. “Why not foster it?”

Her face twisted, expression sour. Diana did not take kindly to being contradicted, nor to what she saw as attempts to take that which she deemed hers. “So you would have them both, then; is that it?”

“Or you,” Gabriel offered gently. “Should you prefer it.”

She did, of course. So Bellamy and Octavia both went to her garrison, not to be separated again until the day they received their assignments.

Bellamy never saw Gabriel again after that, but his kindness was not forgotten. When he felt the archangel fall, he mourned; more than he had for any of his kin before.

He shan’t forget it, not even now.

Bellamy lurches to his feet, staggering over to the blade, one hand pressed against the wound Clarke has stitched shut. He stands in front of it, extending his arm out as if to touch it. His fingers stop inches away, repulsed by the sword’s energy. By Gabriel’s grace.

“He died because of human selfishness. It is a loss I will not forgive.”

“But—” Clarke worries her lip, looking unsure. “There are records. I’d always assumed the consort was another Gabriel, or that his name was the origin of the legend but— if the story is true, he did not die. He lived at Queen Josephine’s side for years. Until her death.”

“Until his own,” Bellamy corrects. “When she passed, he followed suit within hours. Had he not fallen, he’d be here today.” 

He feels her approach him from behind, his shoulders rising protectively. She lays a hand on his arm, small and warm and gentle, and he has to fight not to flinch. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re not,” he insists, his voice hollow. “But you will be.”

**Author's Note:**

> What's this? Another WIP??
> 
> Yes!!!
> 
> want your own WIP (or fanart or oneshot I suppose)? all you need to do is make a charitable donation and you can prompt one of our writers or creators here: [The t100 Fic for BLM Initiative](https://t100fic-for-blm.carrd.co)!!!!
> 
> Would love to know your thoughts and feelings on this boy cause it's very out of my usual arena.
> 
> Kudos and comments are craved and treasured, as always


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